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Archive 1Archive 2

Dante's story of Odysseus' final voyage

In Dante's Inferno, Odysseus tells the story of how he gathered together some of his men and explored the unknown ocean, sailing for many months, only to be sunk by (implicitly) the will of God when they approached Mount Purgatory. This is already in the article of course, but with the appended suggestion that Dante wrote that way because he had no direct knowledge of the Greek texts. This is disingenuous; the story of Odysseus' voyage is one of the most powerful and most discussed episodes of the Inferno, and it is very far from just being filler invented on the spot to cover up a lack of knowledge. Dante was quite deliberate about what stories he chose to tell, and sometimes deliberately ambiguous.

Interestingly, both Jorge Luis Borges in a posthumously published set of Eight Lectures on Dante and Swedish literary critic/poet/essayist Olof Lagercrantz, in From Hell to Paradise: Dante and his Comedy suggest the same deeper reason for the story, which they see as invented by Dante. As a writer, Dante was going far beyond what medieval authors were supposed to be doing: he was constructing an image of the cosmos, details of its shape and its morals, on his own personal ideas, making pronouncements on the final fate of kings, popes, bishops and all sorts of people, in a poem directed to the educated laity, not at philosophers or clergy. He was acting with a self-assurance and panache that had been almost unheard of in this kind of verse epic in the literature of the high middle ages. In a real sense he was breaking out of the permitted role of a writer and poet, like Odysseus is doing when he explores the Atlantic, and he can be safely assumed to have felt fear and trembling as he strode along into this new kind of writing, where the poet doesn't have to answer to anyone, certainly not to priests or barons.

Borges' lectures were likely held in the 1940s (according to the preface to the French translation by Hector Bianchiotti) but were not published or known until after his death in the eighties. Lagercrantz' book appeared in Swedish in 1964 and in English in 1966; it has been translated into several other languages and widely praised; he was one of the most high-profile critics and publicists of Sweden for a couple of decades. So they arrived at the same idea independently of each other. Both authors were highly familiar with Dante and are clearly notable, even if neither book is in the vein of a strict academic study. Strausszek (talk) 17:22, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Shield story

Apparently there is no good source for the story about Odysseus jumping on his shield. See this comment for more details. --Slashme (talk) 10:46, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

If there's no good source for the story why bother keeping any mention of it at all? The first Greek to die isn't at all relevant to Odysseus if the story is removed. Jehovahkiin (talk) 13:34, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

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Comments and questions

I read with interest this article and made some improvements to text and layout. I have a few things I would like to add.

1a. Is there a letter such as "Ὀ" in Greek? I thought "O" with an accent is "Ώ".

1b. Is there a letter such as "ὄ" wish apostrophe and accent in Greek?

2. "The story of the death of Palamedes has many versions. According to some, Odysseus never forgives Palamedes", "One tradition says Odysseus convinces a Trojan captive to write a letter", "Other sources say that Odysseus and Diomedes goad Palamedes" and "Some late Roman sources indicate that Odysseus schemed to kill his partner" should all have sources.

3. "Some late Roman sources indicate that Odysseus schemed to kill his partner".

Who is Odysseus's partner?

4. Was the bow that only Odysseus strings really a bow that belongs to Apollo? Where is in written in the Odyssey?

5. The article does not mention of Argos after he sees Odysseus for the first time in a many years. I would be nice to add to the text.

6. "According to some late sources, most of them purely genealogical, Odysseus had many other children besides Telemachus".

What are the "late sources"? They should be listed.

7. The article says "Aeschylus, Sophocles (Ajax, Philoctetes) and Euripides, (Hecuba, Rhesus, Cyclops)".

Aeschylus is mentioned but no plays are listed in parentheses (it would be nice to add them).

8. "After travelling west and south for five months, they see in the distance a great mountain rising from the sea (this is Purgatory, in Dante's cosmology) before a storm sinks them."

What is "them"?

9. "Dante does not have access to the original Greek texts of the Homeric epics, so his knowledge of their subject-matter was based only on information from later sources, chiefly Virgil's Aeneid but also Ovid; hence the discrepancy between Dante and Homer".

It's not clear to me what is the "discrepancy". Can anybody explain?

10. "he gathers together a band of old comrades 'to sail beyond the sunset'".

Does it mean he has explorers?

ICE77 (talk) 07:09, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 9 June 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: consensus not to move the pages to the proposed titles at this time, per the discussion below. But as they say, "A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery." Dekimasuよ! 01:22, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

– Per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC with regard to Ulysses and disambiguation; and per WP:COMMONAME (by more than a 2:1 ratio) with regard to Ulysses [1] versus Odysseus [2] (specifically in the context of the Odyssey, not just the frequency of occurrence of the names). The mythological figure is by far the primary topic for "Ulysses". The rest of the stuff at the Ulysses disambiguation page is either people with this as a given name, or works, companies, etc., deriving their name from the mythological figure. That figure's most common name in English is Ulysses (even if some of us would rather that were not so). Odysseus might dominate in scholarly sources, but our common-name determinations are not based on usage in just the mythography and classical studies journals. The point is to use the name most WP:RECOGNIZABLE to our readers, and in English that's Ulysses by a wide margin. If the Odysseus name is retained for the article, Ulysses should still change to redirect directly to this article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:13, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

  • Oppose both moves. Ulysses (novel) is just as important as the mythical figure in terms of page views which are about equal. Web results are skewed by this as can be seen in titles like "The Odyssey in Ulysses" that appear prominently in the nominator's web results. These moves will create more problems than they solve. (I'm not really even sure what the problem is.) —  AjaxSmack  17:19, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose both moves. This is ridiculous. Odysseus is the common name and has been for at least the past fifty years. "Ulysses" is almost exclusively used in sources written half a century ago or earlier. All major modern translations of the Odyssey, including Fitzgerald (1961), Fagles (1996), Wilson (2017), and Green (2018) universally call him "Odysseus"; the last major translation to call him "Ulysses" was probably Butler's in 1900. He is virtually always referred to as "Odysseus" in nearly all scholarly and popular writings written within the last fifty years. I can hardly think of a scholar who does not call him "Odysseus." Nonetheless, since it seems to only be popular writings that you care about, you can pick up pretty much any children's book about mythology and it will call him "Odysseus"; this includes classics like D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths (1962) and more recent works like Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians series (2005 - 2009). The same is true for popular works targeting adults; Carl Kerényi's The Heroes of the Greeks, written as early as 1959 for an adult popular audience, already calls him "Odysseus." Changing this article's title to "Ulysses" would be moving it away from the current common name and harkening back to a quaint, archaic custom of using Latin names for Greek mythological figures from over a century ago. It simply does not make sense; this is equivalent to insisting that article currently title Gilgamesh be moved to Izdubar, since that is what he was almost universally known as a century ago, due to an incorrect reading of the cuneiform symbols used to write his name. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:56, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
You warmed my heart, citing D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths! I really should crack that open again... P Aculeius (talk) 14:42, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose both. Modern scholarship names the character "Odysseus". I can draw upon dozens of books on my bookshelves (behind me as I write) to substantiate this if need be. Paul August ☎ 18:09, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose both moves. Contrary to the nom, the two major recent pop Iliad adaptations - Troy: Fall of a City and Troy (film) both called their character "Odysseus". If Sean Bean says he is Odysseus, I for one am not going to argue. I rest my case. Johnbod (talk) 21:15, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Well-intentioned, I think I should say that, and if you're a Latinist then understandable. But this is a Greek mythological figure, not a Roman one, and his Greek name is about as well-known as his Latin one, even if the Latin one is quite important due to historical use. If there were enough information on Odysseus in Roman myths, you could have a separate article under Ulysses, focusing on Roman traditions about Odysseus, and giving only a summary of the Greek. And that may be the case, particularly with respect to the number of notable people and things named after him. But leave Odysseus here. If this were a case of "Pergamon" vs. "Pergamum", I might be inclined to go with the Latin, but again, "Odysseus" is reasonably familiar to English speakers, and has been for a long time. I just hope that nobody comes along demanding to use some kind of modern hypercorrect transliteration, like, "Ódusséos". P Aculeius (talk) 14:38, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose 1st, STRONGLY Oppose 2nd per above. Odysseus is the most commonly-used name. Paintspot Infez (talk) 20:32, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

text to picture with Polyphemus

"the cyclop Polyphemus" When a Greek word has an s at the end it is generally not a plural (see kudos). It should be cyclops, not cyclop.Ealtram (talk) 16:27, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

@Ealtram: I have now corrected this error. Thank you for pointing it out. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:39, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Unclear phrasing

@Malcolm77: The following phrasing was added in 4/2017:

Vase inscriptions have the two groups of Olyseus (Ὀλυσεύς), Olysseus (Ὀλυσσεύς) or Ōlysseus (Ὠλυσσεύς), and Olyteus (Ὀλυτεύς) or Olytteus (Ὀλυττεύς). Probably from an early source from Magna Graecia dates the form Oulixēs (Οὐλίξης), while a later grammarian has Oulixeus (Οὐλιξεύς).[3]

citing LSJ as a source. I can see that this relates to the forms given in LSJ, but I can't make sense of the English here. Can someone clean it up? What are the "two groups"? What does "probably... dates the form" mean? --Macrakis (talk) 17:48, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Repetitive Stories/Organization Fix

A few of the myths are repeated twice in the article. For instance, how Odysseus tricks a disguised Achilles into revealing himself before the Trojan War is repeated twice. Reorganizing some of the sections might clear up the repetition and make the article smoother.

Shemumbles (talk) 21:12, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Washingtondorian.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:35, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

things of interest not noted

Exposure to modern retellings of this classic core metaphor of our culture (as Jean Luc Picard, Star Trek Next Generation, called it) would be worth displaying how this saga exists still, is being modernized and updated, but living still. My favorite is "The Natural" with Robert Redford. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1C2:4E00:2100:2DBE:9E91:4965:372C (talk) 07:29, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

odysseus / odin

in the presence of edits trying to connect odysseus to semitic languages or even sumerian culture, i tried to point out that odysseus and odin looking the same is probably not a coincidence, and it was removed. i stand by that edit.

the greek language comes from the north of europe, not from the middle east. greek words share a common root with german and russian, not with hebrew and arabic. the origins of these stories are in proto-indo-european. that is obvious. so, if you're looking for deeper connections, you should look to german mythology, and not to ancient semitic religion.

the proto-indo-european root for odin is "rage", whereas the pie root for odysseus is "hate". odysseus and odin have a great many similarities, in both being extrapolations of the hermes archetype. it is also curious that odin and odysseus both share derivations of poetry in their respective daughter languages.

this is nor original, exactly, but it's not accepted, either. it is a better idea than trying to connect it to sumeria, for the obvious reason that the languages are incomparable, and it's a several thousand year gap, with no intervention.

the strong similarities in the mythologies of the indo-european peoples has long been observed. it is not helpful to look towards distant (both geographically and temporally) sumeria, when there are closer comparisons in time and space, unless you have a political agenda your'e advancing.

i will let somebody else write this up. 107.179.229.114 (talk) 19:54, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

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